


found poetry

by riyku



Series: Skam Sunday [21]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Mental Health Issues, true fucking love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 22:39:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riyku/pseuds/riyku
Summary: It's been a year, and this is what Even's been learning.





	found poetry

**Author's Note:**

> let's talk about how it's probably Sunday somewhere along the time-space continuum. huge, huge thanks to tebtosca. it's a good thing we're hitched, or she woulda kicked me out ages ago.
> 
> 21st fic in this series. this little fact psyched me out so much i couldn't write anything at all for three weeks. beg pardon. hope you enjoy!
> 
> nb: there is some suicidal ideation here, folks. nothing more detailed than what the show gave us, but enough to mention.

It's been a year, and this is what Even's been learning.

\---

Isak is sentimental. It's something he inherited from his mother, like his hair color and the slight upturn of his nose and his rare, triple-dimple smile, but Even never points it out. Not the sentimentality or the DNA. Maybe later. For now, it's enough to know that Isak thinks about the things they've said and done and that it extends beyond wifi passwords and worn out t-shirts and quickly sketched artwork tacked haphazardly to their wall. There are things he holds onto in a quiet, unspoken way.

It's late spring. A nothing day and Even has the windows open in their apartment, clearing out the stale, combined smell of two boys with irregular laundry habits. Isak's out with Jonas, won't be home until much later, and Even's revamping their bookshelf. He can't remember why he once thought that arranging their books by color was ever a good idea, nice to look at but useless in the strictest sense of organization and now he has everything in stacks at his feet, stuck for a while paging through one of his old sketchbooks. 

This one is ancient history, from back when the covers needed to be blue instead of green. Pre-Isak, Bakka days, his pen and ink phase. Steadman-like splatters all over the place, a smudged thumbprint that Even's pretty sure belonged to Mikael, the drawings sloppier and sloppier the deeper Even goes into the sketchbook, so much ink the paper is crinkled, looks waterlogged. More desperate. Building like the sense of dread that's now creeping in on Even's edges as he continues turning the pages, like watching a slasher flick he's seen a dozen times, waiting for the jump-scare he knows is about to happen and when it comes, still jumping anyway. 

Even pauses, takes a deep breath, fingernail caught on the next page but not turning it. Outside, the day is pretty. Sunny. Clear. The light pours into their small apartment and there's no human monster with a ski-mask and a bloody butcher knife waiting on the other side of some dark, blind corner. He can do this. 

He flips the page and finds it blank, exactly like he knew he would. Exactly like the one after and the one after that. A series of very near misses that led him to new sketchbooks with green covers and a pair of brand new shoes to wear to a brand new school. Some wild stroke of fortune that led him to Isak, who pushes him and pulls him and always holds on so incredibly tight, who helps him to realize how much he wants to live through who he was to become who he is.

It's the furthest he's ever gotten. The first time he's been able to turn the page, follow it all the way to the end, and for a while, Even considers throwing it away, maybe doing something painfully symbolic with it like ripping out the pages, folding them into tiny sailboats and then hauling Isak along with him on a trip down to the harbor. Stand arm in arm and watch them all dip and bob away as the tide goes out. Instead, he finds a spot for it on the shelf. Up high. All the way to the left.

The next book he picks up is Isak's. One he plainly nicked from the library, a layer of thin cellophane protecting the cover, its due date three years passed. Important enough to have made the move from his house to Eskild's to this one. It's Hawking, _The Grand Design_ in hardback, a starburst shape on the front of it.

Kept safe between a chapter on the multi-verse and another on reconciling the existence of God within a mainframe of godless logic and science is a flower. A dandelion, pressed flat and fragile, its stem frozen in a shape like the letter s. It reminds Even of the curve at Isak's lower back, the line where Isak's lips meet when he isn't smiling. 

Even thinks about the day he tucked it behind Isak's ear, how Isak had grinned so big his still-swollen black eye had squinted nearly shut. How he'd gone up on his tiptoes to kiss him in the middle of the sidewalk, then had woven their fingers together and didn't let go.

He tries to read a few paragraphs of the chapter, but Even's mind doesn't bend in this direction, and anyway, it's not the kinda book you can start half-way through. He closes it, careful of the flower in the middle, and puts it on the shelf, front and center to remind himself to ask Isak about it later. Have him put it in his own words.

Luckily, Isak is the kinda book Even can start three chapters in and still hope to understand, and sure, there might be infinite universes and infinite versions of the two of them. Countless Isaks and Evens spun out over time and space. But Even has no reason to go looking for any other universes, because he already has this one. Here and now. And in this one he has Isak, who on good days is Even's heartbeat and on bad days is Even's heartbeat, only louder.

\---

"What's this?" Isak has the Hawking in his hand, standing in the middle of their room in his boxer shorts and bare feet, damp hair dripping onto his shoulders. His cheeks are flushed from the shower. Maybe flushed from something else, too.

A few weeks have passed since Even rearranged the shelf. Isak's a dozen days into eighteen and his name has been added to the lease and the utility bills and the place is now theirs in writing and not only in promises.

"Hmm?" Even looks up from his laptop, where he'd been daydreaming over plane tickets and rental flats with ornate, tiled balconies. Slow mornings made up of good coffee and pastries and brilliant, colorful alleyway markets that smell like spices.

"There are two in here." Isak crosses to him, closes the laptop and sets it aside to make room for himself instead, straddling Even's hips and tipping the open book in his direction, careful to keep the two dandelions in place.

"Okay, okay," Even starts, his hands finding their place on Isak's waist, thumbs pressing in for emphasis. "I was in the park and they were landscaping, and a lawnmower was closing in and it was just _there,_ and it made me think of you. I couldn't stand the thought of it getting all chewed up, so." He looks up at Isak, watches a smile gradually spread on his face, happiness eating up false exasperation. 

"Even Bech Nӕsheim, savior of dandelions. Big goddamn hero." He leans in, grin still there as he kisses Even, pulls away before things go a little too far to turn back.

"You're not mad?" Even asks. Isak's thighs flex against his hips and his hand is warm on the side of Even's neck and Even can't imagine anything quite so satisfying as the weight of this boy sinking him into the mattress, of being allowed to hold the whole of him.

"Why would I be mad?" Isak loops his arms around his neck, draws a line down the bridge of Even's nose with the tip of his own, settles more fully in his lap and now there's a very, very good chance that things have gone a little too far. Yeah, no turning back.

"It was your thing. Something that belonged to only you."

A small laugh, breathed out against Even's mouth so Even can taste it. "It was never just mine. It was always ours."

\---

Because of Isak, Even now understands stuff like how cells operate and the importance of bees and spiders in the big scheme of things. Isak teaches him constantly, but it never happens in a lecturing way. More like osmosis. More like:

"I just read that we are about sixty-percent genetically the same as a banana. Fucking weird. Flip a coin, and we all could have been bananas."

Or:

"Venus is the only planet that spins in a different direction from all the others. And I kinda feel bad about Pluto."

Or, while standing shoulder to shoulder in their tiny bathroom, brushing their teeth:

"There's this milk-tooth bank in Bergen, of all places." 

"A bank?" Even spits into the sink, rinses, slides behind Isak and wraps his arms low around his stomach as Isak finishes, his chest plastered to Isak's back. He sways a little, leads them into a musicless slow dance.

"Yeah, like a depository full of baby teeth. The biggest one in the world, but that's probably because it's the _only_ one in the world." Toothpaste foam drips down Isak's chin and Even wipes it up for him with his pinky finger, flicks it into the sink.

Even hums, drops a kiss to the crook of Isak's neck, feels Isak shiver into it. "Why would they want to collect them?"

"Dunno. Probably to test the effects of diet and the environment on human development or something." Isak leans over to spit and comes up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "It's just weird to think about. All those disembodied teeth."

Even scrapes his teeth along Isak's shoulder to be topic appropriate, rocks against him and pulls them tightly together. "You're a genius, you know that? It's hot."

Green eyes find Even's in the mirror, lock in and hold him there. "We're talking about _teeth_. Fucking hell, Even."

"We're talking about how smart you are," Even counters, and loosens his grip enough that Isak can turn in his arms, ass up against the sink. Increasingly defined shoulders and knobby spine and slim waist on reversed display in the mirror. "See? Hot."

And that's another thing Even's figuring out. How Isak can stagger him with a certain kinda look, and how it can happen when they’re in the middle of some mundane task like brushing their teeth and getting ready for bed. How running his hands up along Isak's ribs will always make him gasp in the middle of his snickering, make the tips of his ears turn red and his eyes go dark, and how a kiss is never just a kiss.

\---

It's been a year since Even had his back against a bathroom wall, phone in his hands, trying to find the right way to say goodbye.

It's been a year since he pushed through the doors, out into the rain and the cold and nearly fell to his knees when he found Isak there, watched the expression on Isak's face change. Relief that tempered the fear but didn't erase it. A drop of yellow in blue to make green.

It's been a year since Isak showed him that love isn't something that will break his heart. It's something that will pick him up and dust him off, then keep hauling him up over and over until the day comes when his legs are finally strong enough to hold him again. 

It's been a year and now the candles are lit on their table, two plane tickets hidden under Isak's flea-market plate, courtesy of extra shifts and a happy decimation of Even's savings account. 

Mama Bakkoush's tangine recipe is bubbling on the stove and Even's trying to make the perfect playlist, knows nothing about Moroccan music, but is working to figure it out, tossing in some Gabrielle to make Isak roll his eyes and pretend to hate it. 

He's been at it for a while, caught in a bit of a loop when the key turns in the lock and then Isak is there, kicking off his shoes and dropping his bag and realigning Even's heart in ways he can't imagine.

"Even?" Isak says. Calm. Measured. "What's on fire?"

"Fuck. _Fuck_." Even dashes past him into the kitchen, and then there's the clanging of a pot and a lot of flapping of dishtowels and a pile of charcoal formerly known as tagine. And then there's Isak's mouth on his and his hands in his hair and his giggle. That giggle.

"I think we'll have to throw out the pot," Even says. 

"I think we'll have to throw out the whole kitchen," Isak counters, looking around the room through a light haze of smoke.

Even rubs at the back of his head, one of a dozen nervous habits he can't quite ditch. "Remember when I told you that I could be difficult to live with?"

Isak slides up to him, takes his wrists and puts Even's hands on his waist. "Yeah, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you're impossible to live without."


End file.
